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This year, the UN Foundation's Global Entrepreneurship Council started soliciting proposals from entrepreneurs to solve world problems -- like how businesses could cope with the waste stream produced by the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan.

The UN aims to tap into a generation of social entrepreneurs, people like Wary Parker's Neil Blumenthal and Ido Leffler, co-founder of Yes To Inc., a natural beauty brand, and author of Get Big Fast and Do More Good.

Social entrepreneurs emerged on the scene -- at least to take note of -- 10 or 15 years ago. They were easy to dismiss then, as Millennials whose ideals would give way to the pressures of the business world.

They're harder to dismiss now. A number of those Millennially driven, socially responsible companies have turned into some of the fastest growing. Warby Parker, for instance, raised $60 million from investors including Tiger Global last year. Yes To's products are in 20,000 stores, according to its web site.

I sat in on a meeting of the UN's Entrepreneurs Council in New York a few months ago, partly in preparation for a reporting trip to the Middle East. I talked with Blumenthal, a member of the council, about what it means to be an entrepreneur today, how social entrepreneurship seems baked into the Millennial business culture, and how the culture might be applied to the global problems.

Along with Andrew Hunt, David Gilboa and Jeffrey Raider, he founded New York City-based Warby Parker after a career in nonprofit management and policy. He was a former director of VisionSpring, itself a model of social entrepreneurship (it sells glasses in the developing world for $5 or less.)

But Blumenthal hit the wall on the nonprofit side of the aisle.

"Policy wasn't for me," he said. "I realized for me, entrepreneurship was the most effective way to create change in the world."

Warby Parker famously gives away a pair of glasses for every pair that it sells. Its do-good mission is a huge point of pride for employees of the company, Blumenthal said.

Millennial entrepreneurs know their cohort:

An Ernst & Young survey released last year found Millennial workers are motivated by money and advancement just like everybody else. But in an era of ubiquitous social media, they are also hyper-aware of their company's image, and it's important to them.

Deloitte’s third annual Millennial Survey, which surveyed nearly 7,800 Millennials from 28 countries across Western Europe, North America, Latin America, BRICS and Asia-Pacific, found of Millennial workers that:

* 74% believe business is having a positive impact on society

• 48% believe the positive impact comes from generating jobs

• 71% believe the positive impact comes from increasing prosperity

* 68% believe that businesses could do more to address resource scarcity